Radio Silence (Abandoned industrial district)

[Zholdin Gregorovich]

Zholdin stood there for a moment before he burst into laughter.

The sound was low and rolling, like gravel under the weight of something massive. It wasn’t joy that carried in his voice. It was triumph. Cold and jagged triumph, as if it had waited years for the right moment to unfurl. He’d felt it. For just a breath of time, he had touched something immense, something coiled deep in the pit of his soul, and he’d bent it to his will.

His eyes gleamed as he looked at Giovanni, still brimming with the afterglow of power. “A god, huh?” he said, voice mocking, sharp with amusement. “If we’re handing out religious titles, I’d rather be called a demon. Suits me better. I don’t like the responsibility that comes with sainthood.”

The men around him were silent, some blinking as if uncertain they’d just seen what they’d seen. Others stared outright, eyes wide with some unfamiliar mix of fear and awe. Limon shifted on his feet, still rubbing the shoulder where he’d nearly taken a jolt of electricity to the chest, and Mikov crossed himself without irony.

Zholdin took a slow step forward, rolling out his shoulders, his body still thrumming with what felt like embers of the inferno he’d held. It had come in a moment of fury not for himself, but for his crew. Maybe that was how it worked. Maybe power only answered when you were pushed to the brink, when something inside you snapped and decided it would rather burn than break.

He turned his head slightly toward Dante, something half-approving, half-snarling on his face. “That’s the second favor, is it? You’re stacking quite a tab, magician.” But he didn’t argue it.

Instead, he looked over his shoulder at his men, who were now watching him with something closer to reverence.

He raised his voice, loud enough for everyone to hear. “You’re not bowing to me, boys,” he snapped. “If I start floating or shooting fireballs out my ass, you’re allowed to kick me in the balls. Understood?”

A few nods. A few relieved chuckles. The tension began to bleed out of the air.

Zholdin turned back to Dante, all humor gone now. “I’m not a man who forgets a debt. Two favors. You’ll have them when you call.”

His gaze drifted for a moment to Grym. She hadn’t said a word since the lightning show, but the way she stood, the way she looked at the floor like it had insulted her mother, he knew she was chewing on something lethal. Let her chew.

He rolled his neck and stretched his arms with a grunt. The fire inside was gone for now, snuffed out like a match in the wind. But he remembered it. And if he’d done it once…
He'd do it again.

“Alright,” he said, voice rough. “Let’s get some real food. And someone find me a fucking drink.”

[Giovanni]

Grym was something else. She had guts and that was something he admired greatly. Of course the disrespect wasn't meant for Zholdin and his crew. It was meant exclusively for him. Zholdin ignored it, but as her eyes met his, searching deeply for something he didn't understand, his mind once again went silent. Zholdin's personality had drawn it out again, but the mission the chaos within him sought was accomplished and it fled once more in Grym's presence. The silence hit heavily. He was so used to the noise that it's absence was both a welcome gift and an unwanted curse. His features softened in confusion for a moment until Zholdin continued to speak.

He turned his gaze back to the gopnik leader, but his mind remained uncannily silent. Zholdin owed him two favors. That would come in handy at some point in time he was sure. It was a strange change from not having cared about the first one, but it was the way Giovanni operated. His mind changed when it wanted to. Zholdin suggested real food and drink. Giovanni wanted something else first.

"A shower would be great - if I may," he said. Zholdin gave the affirmative and offered the same to Grym. This was a fight club - there had to be multiple showers there. After a shower, he'd show up and eat, or he wouldn't. He'd offer Zholdin instruction on his powers, or he wouldn't. He wouldn't know until that decision came.

As the group left, Giovanni turned towards her again, his eyes narrowed in suspicion - or maybe confusion once again. She was still angry with him. His hand moved, almost as if to reach out and touch her, but he held back. He wasn't sure why. When he finally spoke, his words were quiet - quiet enough that only she could hear. The words were meant for her. "And what power is it that you wield?" he asked her, feeling as if even asking that question cracked his defenses. Giovanni didn't wait for her to answer, he just turned and headed towards the showers. He needed to think, and for some reason, showers were good for that.

[[OoC: Shower offer was with permission]]

[Alistair Bishop]

Alistair stood under the shower longer than he needed to. Long after the water ran clear. Long after the blood and the factory grime and the smell of that thing had swirled down the drain.
He didn't move. Just stood there, palms flat against the tile, head bowed, hot water hammering the back of his neck. He was naked and the heat felt good on his body. It had been through a lot tonight.

What the hell did you just see, Bishop.

He'd been in some bad situations. Drug dens in Columbus. A cage fight gone wrong in Volgograd where a referee ended up missing three fingers. He'd been jumped in a parking garage in Ohio at nineteen and held his own against two men with a tire iron. He wasn't soft. He wasn't the type that flinched.
But that thing in the factory had taken men. Not killed them, taken them. Soundlessly. Without a fight, without a warning, without so much as a boot scuffing the floor. And then the chains. The firelight. The pale, hungry shape moving between them like it was choosing which glass to drink from first.

His jaw tightened.

He didn't have a word for what it was. Grym had apparently known, something she'd called it soft-voiced in the dark, like the name was from a textbook she'd memorized years ago. The Italian had thrown fire. Actual fire, out of nothing. And Zholdin had done something too, something Alistair couldn't name and didn't want to yet.

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

He'd seen a lot in the eighteen months since landing in Moscow. He thought he had a decent working map of what the world was and wasn't. He'd been wrong.
Eventually the water ran cold and he got out.

He dressed in silence, pulling on a spare set of clothes someone had left folded on the bench, Zholdin's people, efficient and unasked. His shoulder ached where the chain had caught him when he'd thrown his weight trying to get loose. He flexed his hand and watched the knuckles pale and flush. Alive. That counted for something.

When he came out, the room had the loose, exhausted quality of men who'd survived something and weren't ready to talk about it yet. Someone had produced vodka. Mikov had it first. Grisha was staring at the floor. Limon looked like he might sleep sitting up.

Alistair pulled up a chair at the edge of the group, not quite inside the circle, not outside of it, and accepted the bottle when it came his way. He took one pull, set it down, and said nothing.
Zholdin watched him from across the room with those flat green eyes that never quite stopped calculating. Alistair met the look and held it for a beat, then let it go.

Whatever this crew was, whatever tonight was, it wasn't the Moscow he'd arrived in. That much was already clear.

He picked up the bottle again, took one more pull, and passed it along.

"Make it a double," he said, mostly to no one. "Whatever the hell that was, I need two of them."

He leaned back in the chair, eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance, and let the noise of the room wash over him.

He had some thinking to do.

[will find another thread to hop into or something else ]